Female electrical connectors commonly have a shorting clip in the form of a U-shaped body having two depending legs to engage the sides of the respective female terminals. When the male connector is plugged in, the male connector has an abutting surface that engages a ramp on the U-shaped body to deflect it away from the female terminals.
The known designs for shorting clips may be very sensitive to the overall tolerance stack of the connection system. Some designs, particularly ones with lift ramps, are also sensitive to the amount of axial movement of the electrical plugs. Some lift ramps do not always guarantee sufficient deflection to assure disengagement from the female electrical terminals.
Some clips may be overstressed when deflected to introduce permanent yielding that may result in, when released from the deflective force, loss of resilient motion back toward the electrical terminals with a resultant lack of adequate shorting contact force with the electrical terminals.
Shorting clip designs have required mounting of the clip axially within the electrical terminal body which requires specialized assembly steps often with specialized assembly tooling.